Soon, New York City will have only one restaurant run by the Peruvian-leaning Llama group left. The 10-year-old Williamsburg restaurant Llama Inn is closing on Sunday, December 20, at 50 Withers Street at Meeker Avenue.

Just this summer, chef Erik Ramirez (an alum of Eleven Madison Park), Juan Correa, and the team closed their Peruvian Japanese restaurant Llama San in Greenwich Village. The group also had a West Village counter-service restaurant Llamita, which ran from 2018 to 2020.

The team opened Llama Inn in 2015, garnering attention for its Peruvian fare. In a 2016 New York Times review, Pete Wells wrote that “the roast whole chicken, with smoke in its meat and blackened chile rub on its skin, isn’t so much an alteration of the Peruvian standard as an intensification,” and that he’d “enjoy meeting regularly with this chicken.” It also landed No. 76 on the Times’ best NYC restaurants of 2024. Ramirez was also a finalist for the restaurant in the James Beard Award’s Outstanding Chef category in 2023.

The Llama Inn outposts in London and Madrid remain open. And there’s still the newer Peruvian Nikkei restaurant Papa San in Hudson Yards, which opened in February, and is also still open.

A young restaurant is closing on the Lower East Side

Newer Lower East Side restaurant Cactus Wren is closing on Sunday, November 30, at 98 Rivington Street, at Ludlow Street. “After lots of conversations, deep breaths, and a whole lot of feelings, we’ve made the tough call to close Cactus Wren,” explains the Instagram post. “Restauranting is difficult, y’all.”

Samuel Clonts and Raymond Trinh, who are alums of tasting menu spot 63 Clinton, opened Cactus Wren in February, pegged as a restaurant with “regional Southwestern cuisine and French techniques” in a comparatively casual setting with lots of seafood and wood-fired dishes like pizza.

Something to add to your calendar

Border Town — known for its stellar flour tortillas and tacos— is hosting a bunch of pop-ups before officially opening its highly anticipated Greenpoint restaurant this winter. The next pop-up is taking place at Greenpoint ice cream shop the Screen Door (which is closed for the season currently) on Sunday, November 30, at 10 a.m., followed by one on Sunday, December 7, at that same time.